Terriers for Sale: Pets, Rosettes and Workers All

Legendary terriermen? Certainly! Were they selling legendary dogs? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

If a dog is excellent at age two and half, you have to wonder why it is being sold. As for puppies, they are more of an optimistic hope than a proven reality.

Both adverts could be offering very good things ... and they could also have been offering something that ended up being a little less than was required or wanted, depending on the throw of the dice and the nature of the homes they were placed in.

What is not in dispute is that both of these ads were placed by legendary terriermen about 45 years ago.

Bert Gripton and Frank Buck were the real deal. They lived to hunt their dogs and bred dogs as a supplement to their hunting activities. That said, both men were known to breed quite a few dogs and sell them off too -- mostly to people who did far less digging than the dogs deserved -- and almost certainly less than these legendary men themselves did.

In fact, dog breeding seems to be a common thread among the "famous" terriermen of the past. If you have heard of almost any terrierman now dead -- John Russell, Arthur Heinemann, Frank Buck, Cyril Breay, Bert Gripton, etc. -- you can be sure they were moving a lot of dogs, and not just a lot of dirt.

To say this is to take away nothing from Gripton or Buck, Breay or Heinemann (and several other good and worthy gentlemen still living and left unnamed). They deserve their excellent reputations. It is simply to say that just as we sing a paean to "foxes yet unseen," so too should we give a nod and pour a dram for the hundreds of unknown working terrier enthusiasts, game keepers and huntsmen who have done at least as much to preserve and protect working terriers over the years. They may be unknown, but they are the core of the cable that is the working terrier tradition.

Today, we commonly see people advertising puppies as being "sired by WHATEVER" and bought directly from So-and-So HIMSELF.

Fair enough, but have you seen the legendary WHATEVER in the field? Has HIMSELF actually dug on a dog any time in the last 20 or 30 years? Or is this just name-dropping and pedigree paper-chasing -- the very same thing we see with show ring breeders?

The situation becomes comical when people order dogs from people they have never met in countries they have never visited. Perhaps they traded a few emails with a Great Man. Perhaps they have even toured the kennel. Excellent.

One has to wonder about those forty terriers barking in the back of the Great Man's place, however. Even if a person digs every week, it's hard to find enough work for four or five terriers. Forty? Impossible. Yes, yes, dogs can be loaned out for work to the hunts, but that's not going on too much, is it? A hunt terrierman wants a dog that is reliable (and small), not a parade of green reeds that do not know their job. And no one in the U.S. is loaning out dogs at all; if the breeder is not working them his or her self, you can be sure they are not being worked at all.

Yet young and foolish dog buyers continue to drive the business of puppy sales, don't they? There has never been a shortage of puppy peddlers. That is true in the world of working dogs as well as the world of pets-and-rosettes.

The working boards are full of people that have never dug on a dog themselves, but who have a kennel full of puppies for sale. "Bred from THIS line out of WHATEVER" they proclaim, as if this line of nonsense tells you anything.

Just ask for pictures of the dam and sire working. "Oh I never thought to take a camera into the field ... I don't share pictures because the Animal Rights people might get a-hold of them."

Right!

Any variation on this nonsense, and it's best to keep moving. People that work their dogs in the modern world have pictures of their dogs working and (in America at least) they can take you out on any given weekend and show you their dogs doing their stuff in the ground. We are a hunting society, and there is nothing unethical about terrier work as we practice it.

As for all this focus on "lines" of working terriers, it is taken to a level of absurdity by the puppy peddlers. Anyone who knows anything about working terriers knows no true working dog is a "pure" anything, and genes are quickly diluted. "Descended from So-and-So" tells you almost nothing, especially if you never saw the dog work yourself. A first generation dog is only half that gene pool, and a second generation dog is a quarter or less. In the end you are buying a pig in a poke.

Yes, a cross between between Mike Tyson and Robin Givens might get you super-model looks with a boxer's hooks, but it is just as likely to give you an ugly, stupid, scrawny and foul-tempered kid who has small hands, a thin frame, and an irritating lisp. Cross Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe and you are just as likely to get Einstein's looks and Marilyn's brains as the other way around!

Breeding, of course, is important. Working dogs are more likely to descend from two working dogs than not, and the best practice remains, as always, to get dogs that have solid working sires and dams.

Just remember, however, that there are two sides to every breeding, and much of what is being crossed from one generation to another is entirely unknown even when someone has had a "line" of terriers for two or three generations. Not every cross is a success.

In any case, a working terrier is not all about genetics is it? How many good dogs have been ruined by young fools that over-matched a dog too young? How many people have heard people proclaim a dog "worthless" when it was only 14 months old? How many people leave their dogs caged and pacing in a kennel for 12 months out of the year and then expect the dog to work like a practiced veteran the three or four times a year it is let out to see forest or field?

If only these examples were rare! Sadly, they are not.

What made the dogs of people like Frank Buck and Bert Gripton exceptional was not just breeding -- it was that these dogs saw a lot of experience in the field and were raised by people who understood how dogs thought. These MEN were as legendary as the dogs. Sadly, their experience and knowledge does not convey with the pedigree.

The ads these genuine digging men men wrote for their dogs should be read. They speak volumes in a few words: "parents small," ; "trial if necessary," ; "parents can be seen at work six days a week."

Compare these small printed advertisements to the folks who now post elaborate graphics-filled web sites offering puppies for sale. Some web sites are all about ribbons and rosettes, while others show pictures of dogs chained out in dirt yards with photos shot through rusting wire mesh.

Different ends of the social spectrum, to be sure, but what both types of web sites have in common is that neither one mentions actual terrier work.

For puppy peddlers, taking dogs out into the field to work, weekend after weekend, is too close to real work. Dogs in the field might get injured and veterinary care and tools cut into profit margins. Field work time is in direct competition with show ring trial dates.

Besides digging on the dogs a couple of times a month is suspiciously like labor. For puppy peddlers, the bottom line is the bottom line, and it is all about cash and ego, not true terrier work.

Compare the size of the genuine earth dogs offered by people like Gripton, with the hulking dogs offered up for barn and brush pile work here in the U.S.

These over-large dogs are not true terriers. Terrier means "earth dog" in French. A terrier is a dog that is capable of going to earth and to which you dig to when you are hunting.

These over-large barn-and-brush pile dogs might be called "grangier" (a possible french world for "barn dogs") or even "arbrier" (a possible french name for "tree dogs") or "bidonier" (a possible french name for "trash-pile dogs") or "batimentiere" (a possible french word for "building crawl-space" dogs), but they are not true terriers if they cannot go to ground in dirt . . . . and do so in most of the settes they encounter in their area.




Bert Gripton used to advertise that his dogs could be seen at work six days a week. Not many can say that now (and, truth be told, not many could say it back then either).

Working six days a week? Think about what that means. Regular work, day in and day out, week after week, is hardly possible with a very hard dog that goes in and gets punch-drunk with bites and rips every time it goes to ground.

Yes, the folks who dig three days a year will tell you they value a hard dog. What they will not tell you, of course, is how little time they actually spend digging.

The more you dig on the dogs, the more you come to value brains, voice, balance, and a touch of discretion in a dog, and the quicker you are to sort things out at the end of a dig. A dog that is laid up for three weeks with a ripped lip is a bad outcome if you really serious about getting out and amassing field time. Not everyone is, of course.




Bert Gripton knew the value of a small dog!
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A Brief History of the UKC

The United Kennel Club (UKC) was founded by Chauncey Bennett in 1898 because the fledgling American Kennel Club (AKC) would not register his American Pit Bull Terrier, Bennett's Ring.

The AKC wanted the world to know they were not just about dogs;  they were about well-bred dogs owned by well-bred people. The AKC was eager to show that they were willing to wash their hands of riff-raff, both human and canine, and the American Pit Bull terrier was where they decided to draw the line.

Of course, the AKC ban on the Pit Bull did not last too long. 

With the rise of the Little Rascals TV show of the 1930s, "Petey" the dog became a star, and the AKC decided to reverse itself and add the American Staffordshire Terrier to its roles.  This was, however, the very breed that the AKC had rejected just 35 years earlier.

Today the UKC is the second largest canine registry in the U.S., which is to say that it is first in line to be in direct competition with the AKC. 

Standing behind it, of course, is a dizzying array of other multi-breed registries -- the American Rare Breed Association, the Canadian Kennel Club, the Continental Kennel Club, the World Wide Kennel Club, the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI), the International Progressive Dog Breeders Alliance, the National Kennel Club, and the Animal Research Foundation.

The UKC claims it promotes the "total" dog, i.e. a dog that performs as well as it looks. In the early days of the UKC, this was largely true, as most of the registries were coon and fox hounds, pointers, retrievers, setters, and herding dogs.

Along the way, however, the United Kennel Club began adding more and more breeds of dogs that never had a job to do -- lap spaniels, kitchen-floor cruising terriers, and fluffy coated dogs that could only be called a "working dog" if you worked in a hair salon.

At about the same time, the AKC began ramping up with more "performance" events (agility, earthdog, herding demonstrations, obedience, etc.), while the UKC began adding conformation shows and various contrived dog sport events (go to ground, obedience, agility) that were pretty far from true work.

The result is that today, at least on paper, both organizations seem to be quite similar to each other. 

In practice, however, the two registries continue to have divergent looks and feels, with the UKC having a slightly frayed-at-the-edge quality -- what some might call southern charm and what others might call redneck roughness. The AKC, on the other hand, has gone in the other direction, with carefully choreographed dog shows in which a hair is rarely out of place, the judges are matrons dressed in their Sunday finest, and all the literature is carefully branded and color-coordinated within a unifying palette.

The AKC and the UKC are different in other regards, of course.  The AKC appears to be a failing business model.  This is an organization that has lost more than 60 percent of its membership in the last 15 years.  Projected forward, at current rates of decline,the AKC could be out of business in 15 years time.  

Of couse the AKC still has a much larger membership than the UKC, which is only about 250,000.  That said, the UKC's membership seems to be holding steady and may, in fact be slightly growing.

What's any of this mean for the future?  It's hard to say. 

The UKC is certainly better poised to lead in the world of dogs than the AKC is -- they are not quite as encumbered with the yoke of sniffing social pretensions as the AKC, and their members are more likely to value the work of dogs, and not just the ribbons.  That said, leadership starts with action. 

The good news is that the decision to engage in action sits squarely on the shoulders of one person, Wayne Cavanaugh, who owns the UKC (a for-profit company) outright.   Cavanaugh is a former AKC Vice President and is said to be smart and charming.  But he is also, without a doubt, a pretty good businessman.  Would dropping English Bulldogs from the registry or promoting performance cross-breeds be a good business decision?  Would deviating in any substantive way from AKC  and Kennel Club breed standards and closed-registry tradition mean a steep and marked decline in UKC dual-registered dogs?   You see, things are not simple and straight if you are running a business -- and all canine registries, whether they are for-profit or are "non-profit" are businesses. 

So will the UKC lead?  Time will tell, and we shall see.
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Gideon Bays It and Bolts It

Gideon faced his first squirrel in the short den liner this morning, and he did fine.

There has been no hesitation going down the pipe, and the dog seems to bay well for such a green dog, and considering it cant get with 20" of the quarry.

I released this squirrel (they are only held captive for one short session), and hopefully we will catch another for this afternoon. The trick with training sessions is to keep them short and fun, and build on them. Gideon wants more, more, more!

The bags of mulch on the top of the den liner are there to prevent the liner from moving. The back of the critter box has been rotated out for this first training session, so that Gideon can see the squirrel and associate it with the scent and the scurrying noise. A groundhog, for the record, is simply a 15-pound ground squirrel.



This little clip is the end of Gideon's first go-to-ground session. The squirrel bolts to freedom at the end (not sure if it can be seen). No animals were harmed in the making of this movie!
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For another version of the same story, but with Gordon the Cairn, see Harris' Hawk Blog.
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Cocked Up Dogs

A repost from this blog circa 8-17-06

This morning I stumbled across the web site of Gun Dog Magazine which has a nice piece on it about cocker spaniels. The author, Chad Mason (aka C. Stanley Mason), writes:

"By now the observant reader will have noticed the recurring qualification: 'field bred.' I have thus cracked the lid on a can of worms, and might as well dump them out. There is a definite split in this breed, and space limitations compel me to focus on one side of that split. I do not mean to diminish the worth of show- or dual-type English cockers. Rather, I am ... making a judgment about which type of dog most readers of this magazine would be happiest with.

I am certainly no expert on show dogs, and will leave their discussion to people more qualified than I. (See 'For More Information' at the end of this article.) My modest firsthand experience with dual-type cockers leaves me convinced that a dual-type cocker is basically a show-type cocker that can pass a 'hunting test.'

More worms will squirm free with my encapsulation of hunting test in quotation marks, but I'm willing to bear the scorn. I've spent a quarter century hunting eight species of upland birds and 10 species of waterfowl in wild habitats from Georgia to Alberta, and I killed those birds over nine breeds of sporting dogs representing all major categories: pointers, retrievers, spaniels and versatile breeds.

I've also witnessed hunting tests for all these breeds conducted by several parent clubs and registries. Among the spaniel ranks, the difference between hunting tests and wild bird hunting seems analogous to the difference between passing a quiz and having a real job. "

A nice piece, and the article is worth a read . Though the dogs being described are not terriers, the words are very close to what can be said about "earthdog" trials and the "one and done" hunting certificates coveted by folks only interested in getting their dogs into the "working dog" ring at a show.

Some things, it seems, are the same all over. Mason has apparently written a book of bird hunting essays entitled Voices On The Wind, which is available from www.countrysportpress.com. I have not read it, but it looks interesing ...
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Making a Working Terrier

Gordon shows his stuff in a North Carolina dune sette.

Working terriers are not just born, they are made.

If you give excellent working terrier genetics to a lazy person, a pretender, or a fool, not much will come of the dog, at least as far as real dirt-work is concerned.

If you put a small terrier from the pound in the hands of the right person, however, great things may yet occur. The odds are not quite as good as if the dog were from working stock, of course, but the basic feisty nature of a terrier does not wash out overnight. The code may explode if the dog is given a little opportunity and if the owner is patient, and follows a basic set of directions.

A good example can be found over at the Harris' Hawk blog, where Doug has taken his Cairn terrier, of pedigree unknown, to the next level.

Last year the dog showed a spark of interest in the field, and though Gordon is a little bit big in the chest, he is still small enough to work. What he needed, however, was a little "easy experience" and confidence-building.

Job One was building a short go-to-ground tunnel, which Doug did following the basic directions in my book (available here for those interested).



The end result of a little practice in a very short section of go-to-ground tunnel: instant improvement.

Gordon is now going down empty fox pipes in the sand dunes near Kitty Hawk (see picture at top).

Perfect!

Doug has added a few more tunnel sections to his set-up, and is now introducing Gordon to rats at the end of the tunnel pipe. It turns out that a little live vermin was all Gordon needed to start digging through earth-blocked sections of tunnel.



Is that a field-hunting earthdog being made by the hand of man?

Count on it! Gordon's definitely got the right owner. I predict much fun to come!
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Finishing Up the Short Go to Ground Tunnel

I finished up the short go to ground tunnel by putting wooden bars on one end. They're 1" oak, and are replaceable if the dog chews through them too much.

The box on top is my "critter box," in which I place a live squirrel, which is later released unharmed (others use a rat, but squirrels are free and easy to catch and release where I live).

The dogs do not get access to the critter box until they stay and bay for a little while -- at least a minute or two. I do not require a lengthy stay in a situation where the dog cannot get to the critter (the bars and the expanded metal grate ensure the squirrel's safety).

I have put a hinged door halfway down the straight pipe, so the dog will have to enter the sette, turn a sharp corner, go three feet, dig through some light stuff, and then proceed pass that to the squirrel. Once a dog is doing this with precision, and without hesitation, we are ready for the field!
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Making a Short Go to Ground Tunnel

The new dog comes Monday, so I put together a new short go-to-ground tunnel (aka "earth dog" setup) to get him trained up for the field.

The new dog has already been out once or twice, and worked a possum, but a little go-to-ground work with me will do him no harm, and will do doubt boost his confidence around me and the other dogs.

Jocelyn Lucas was training dogs in stone artificial earths with slate-topped roofs back in the 20s, but the concept has been much improved by the Americans, and further refined by the Swedes, Germans, Finns, Serbs, Danes, and Spaniards.

Most "competition" go to ground setups are far more elaborate that is needed to build confidence in a green dog and get him ready for the field.

That said, many people enter their dogs wrong with go to ground set ups, and as a consequence they spend a long time, later on, correcting faults that them themselves accidentally trained into the dog. More on that later....

For now behold a single sheet of 3/4" plywood (top) turned into a short tunnel go to ground pipe with reversible corner (bottom).

I will put a hinged top in the middle section, later on, so that I can fill the pipe with dirt, sticks, leaves and sand for the dog to dig through. For now, however, easy does it.

I will be making a new critter box out of the spare bits from the 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. A project for another day... along with wooden bars for one of the ends.

• For more on go to ground training tunnels, see:
  ** Simple Tunnel Construction
  ** Terrier Go-to-Ground 101
  ** Tips for Tunnel Training Terriers
  ** American Working Terriers
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Earthdog Ins & Outs

A second edition of Earthdog Ins & Outs by Jo Ann Frier Murza is now available. If you want to do AKC Earthdog trials, this is an excellent resource and reference, complete with earthdog trial history, breed descriptions, practical training and practice techniques, details about exhibiting and sponsoring earthdog tests, and an introduction to natural hunting. Jo An says it has "New pictures, more international trials, updated training and trial information, expanded directions for building earthdog equipment, complete coverage of the new Canadian earthdog testing, and much more." I wrote a review of the first edition, a decade or so ago, which you can read here.

• Related Links:
  ** Tips for Tunnel Training Terriers
  ** Terrier Go-to-Ground 101 (Dog World)
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Just Another Agility Course

This is a repost from July 2007.


While hunting with terriers is an ever-changing, always dynamic day in the field, Kennel Club go-to-ground earthdog trials are normally about as interesting as watching submarine racing.

Hours are spent on the sidelines looking at absolutely nothing, as everything takes place underground and there is no real quarry or actual digging. Bring a chair and a book, and maybe an iPod. It's going to be a long day.

In the video clip, above, we see a valiant attempt to make the slow-moving earthdog trial a visual sport, with an up-and-down earthdog setup, built above-ground, and coupled with a clear plastic side so that the dogs can actually be seen by spectators. I think this rig may have been created for an Animal Planet TV show.

The object of the endeavor is a fox mask at the end of the run.

What is missing here, of course, is even a close approximation of real work; the dog does not have to find the quarry, nor can it get lost underground as there are no side pipes.

The wooden walls are smooth and spacious and present little obstacle to even an over-large dog.

Though there is a constriction point at one point in the pipe, the dog can see what it is up against, and since the barrier is exactly the same as the one it has faced in training, it is not much of a novelty. Even then the dog has to be coaxed to "dig through" the blocking material, which is not real dirt, root and rock but paper excelsior.

Finally, of course, the thing at the end of the pipe is taxidermy and not a live fox, groundhog or raccoon that will lunge, bite, rip a muzzle, snarl, or even bolt.

This is a habit-trail for dogs, same as pet stores sell for hamsters.

I used to think go-to-ground trials did no harm and might even do some good if they drew people into the real world of terrier work, but I am no longer sure. This "see through" trial is even easier than a regular go-to-ground set up, and is pretty far from real terrier work.

There is really no way to "fix" these earthdog trials with better design. The reason for this is simple: the dog has to get through the trial in a few minutes so that the next pay-to-play contestant can step up in an orderly matter. Nor can the test be too hard, or folks won't drive hours to collect their ribbon. Nor can people be asked to carry tools or do any actual digging as many of the human contestants seeking ribbons are in such poor physical shape that crossing a gravel parking lot is considered a journey.

How many people think these earthdog trials are a close approximation of real hunting? Most think that, I can tell you!

That said, if they get even a few people out in the world of digging ... well, there is some small hope of that, I suppose.

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Birds Eye View from Hawks, Falcons & Eagles

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Danish Earthdog Setup

The above picture is of a Danish den dog trial set up. Similar setups are done in Ukraine, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and several other countries, but with somewhat different designs from location to location.

In this design, there is an incline in one section in the middle and a spot where the dog is in a pit below the quarry. To get to the quarry at that location, the dog has to leap up 60 cm on to the ledge next to the drum or "kessel" (pot). This section can be closed off for a simple trial.

The drum on the far right is rotated so that the "quarry" (a live fox or badger) can escape out a side door and run from down the tunnel to another drum (not shown) which is then rotated half way to put bars between the dog and the game.

The fox and badger are very relaxed about the whole thing (they've been doing it their whole lives and are lept as pets) and the dogs get to run around a bit and see if they have voice and whether they will stick to the job even in in non-contact situation. There is no digging and no actual contact between the dog and the fox or badger.

The den pipes are generally too big with these things to suit my taste (9" by 9" is common) and so bigger dogs are able to act as if they have the stuff even when some of them could not get down a real pipe.

That said, this is fun sport for folks without the desire or without the physical ability to take their dogs into the field to do real hunting.
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Tales of Terriers Too Big

I have been doing a LOT of reading of old books and have come away with one general observation: Mounted fox hunting does not have much to do with terrier work!

A 50-year history of the Grafton Hunt (published in 1900) mentions a terrier only once, and just in passing!

So what is this book about? People long dead, that no one cared about even when they were alive!

A close reading of dozens of other books on mounted fox hunting finds little mention of either terriers or hounds and, as a group, they can all be flushed with few exceptions. I will talk about the exceptions in later posts.

For now, let me mention one book, written in 1826, and entitled "Observations on Fox-hunting and the Management of Hounds in the Kennel and the Field, Addressed to Young Sportsman, about to Undertake a Hunting Establishment." Here we find two short tales of terriers.

With regard to the use of Terriers in the field; — they are no doubt sometimes of service, particularly when Foxes use drains, but if they are not perfectly steady, they will do a great deal of mischief. They should invariably be entered with the young hounds, and always be kept in the kennel.

As a matter of curiosity, I here give you an instance or two of the extraordinary length of time terriers will exist without food; one occurred the other day. I was staying at a friend's house in Hertfordshire, who had lost a favourite terrier seven days: on going out to look at his sporting dogs near the house, he thought he heard the voice of his lost dog. He recollected the last time it was seen was near the mouth of a drain, upwards of two hundred yards from the spot from whence the sound came. He immediately ordered his workmen to open the drain, and they found the terrier jammed in a narrow part of it ; the animal appeared lively, and not the worse for her long fasting, except being a little reduced in flesh, and the next day very lethargic.

I heard at the same time a still more extraordinary instance of a terrier remaining in an earth for twenty days, and I dare venture to vouch for the truth of it. The Hatfield hounds had run a Fox to ground, and the terrier followed it in. They dug many hours without coming up to the fox or the dog ; and at last were obliged to give it up as a hopeless job. The terrier was the property of old Joe, the then whipper-in, and a great favourite. He therefore had the earth watched, and on the twentieth day the dog crawled out a mere skeleton, but with proper attention was recovered.

A small observation: The use of over-large terriers has been normalized in the U.K. by the presence of many land drains and the large number of badger earths which a fox can use to get to ground.

An over-larger terrier in a branching drain system, of course, is a problem, as a fox with a 14" chest span can slide into a 9" pipe with ease, and then quite easily slide down a 6" pipe that branches off it.

The too-large terrier, of course, will be fine in a 9" drain, but in the 6" inch drain into which the fox has entered, things are going to be very tight, and for the terrier getting stuck is very likely.

Today, of course, we have electronic terrier locator collars, but in 1824 there was no such thing. The best you could do was drive a bar into the ground, put a cup to the bar, and listen. If the dog was 20 feet away and still shallow, you might get a read, but if it was 40 yards away, and running deep, you were out of luck, and so was the dog.

For more on the problems that come with over-reliance on large drains and artificial earths, see Out of the Ring and Into the Den and Artificial Dens, Big Dogs and Fair Chase.

• Other Related Posts:** "Strong Dog" Trials: Where Fancy Leads to Fantasy
  ** The First Visual Go-to-Ground Set Up?
  ** A Quick History of American Terrier Work
  ** Artificial Earths Go Pre-Fab
  ** Danish Earthdog Setup
  ** The Architecture of Burrows
  ** The Measured Size of Red Fox
  ** Measurement Informs, Exaggeration Deforms
  ** Fox Size Around the World
  ** Terrier Go-to-Ground 101
  ** Cracking Tired Chestnuts About Form and Function
  ** The Archeology of Hunting
  ** EarthDogs in Spain
  ** Form for Function: Span Quarry, Not Just Dogs

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A Quick History of American Terrier Work

A repost from this blog circa August 20, 2005.

For all practical purposes, the story of American terrier work begins in 1971 with Patricia Adams Lent, who founded the American Working Terrier Association to promote working terriers and dachshunds.

The American Working Terrier Association (AWTA) was, and is, a modest organization with fewer than 100 members. It has no headquarters or paid staff, and produces a simple Xeroxed newsletter four times a year. Its web site (as of 2005) has no information about actual hunting or wildlife, and is focused almost entirely on go-to-ground trials.

That said, AWTA is a very important organization in the history of American working terriers, not only because it was the first "club" devoted to the sport, but also because Ms. Lent invented go-to-ground trials, and the basic set of rules governing them.

Since 1971, go-to-ground trials have served as a kind of "on ramp" for actual field work. The basic AWTA format has been widely copied, first by the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America (1976) and then by the American Kennel Club (1994).

The origin of the American go-to-ground tunnel can be found in the artificial fox earths first constructed in the UK in the 1920s, but which came into their own in the 1950s and 60s with the collapse of so many ancient rabbit warrens under the onslaught of myxomatosis.

Artificial earths are generally constructed of two parallel rows of brick stacked three bricks high and topped by overlapping slates, or out of 9-inch clay or concrete drainage pipe laid end-to-end. The result is a very spacious and dry fox earth. If sited within 200 feet of a water source (it does not have to be large), far from residences, and on the edge of fields and small woods, the chance of a fox taking up residence is excellent.

The first artificial fox earths were constructed in order to guarantee that a fox could be found on hunt day, and to encourage fox to run along known courses away from roadways. That said, they also found favor because they proved easy locations for a terrier to bolt a fox from. Even an overlarge dog could negotiate the straight or gently curving unobstructed nine-inch pipes of an artificial earth.

The go-to-ground tunnels devised by Patricia Adams Lent were constructed of wood instead of stone, brick or clay pipe, but were equally commodious, measuring 9 inches on each side with a bare dirt floor for drainage and traction.

From the beginning AWTA's goal was to be inclusive. Scottish Terriers with enormous chests were encouraged to join AWTA, as were owners of West Highland Whites, Cairns, Norfolks, Norwiches, Border Terriers, Fox Terriers, Lakelands, Welsh Terriers and Bedlingtons. All were welcome, with the simple goal of having a little fun with the dogs, and perhaps giving American Kennel Club terrier owners some small idea of what actual terrier work was about.

In AWTA trials, wooden den "liners" are sunk into a trench in the ground. The tunnels are up to 35 feet long with a series of right-angle turns, false dens and exits. The “quarry” at the end of the tunnel is a pair of "feeder" lab rats safely protected behind wooden bars and wire mesh. The rats are not only not harmed, but after 100 years of breeding for docility, some lab rats have been know to go to sleep!

Without a doubt, go-to-ground trials have been a huge hit with American terrier owners. The interior dimensions of the den liners -- 81 inches square -- means even over-large terriers are able to negotiate them with ease. With nothing but a caged rat to face as "quarry," the safety of dogs is guaranteed, and since the dogs only have to bay or dig at the quarry for 90-seconds, most dogs end up qualifying for at least an entry-level certificate or ribbon.

Though the die-hard hunter may sneer, the increasing popularity of go-to-ground terrier trials is a welcome thing, for it has brought more people a little closer to real terrier work.

Owners of dogs that do well in go-to-ground trials should take pride in their dog’s achievements. Like all sports that emulate real work (lumber jack contests, bird dog trials, and sheep dog trials, to name a few), a go-to-ground trial is both harder and easier than its real-world cousin.

A dog that will exit a 30-foot tunnel backwards in just 90 seconds and on a single command (a requirement for earning an AKC Senior Earthdog certificate) is a dog that has been trained to a fairly high degree of proficiency.

Having said that, it should be stressed that a go-to-ground trial has little relationship to true hunting. In the field dogs are not rewarded for speed. In fact, if a hunt terrier were to charge down a real earth like it were a go-to-ground tunnel it would quickly run into quarry capable of inflicting real damage.

In addition, in a real hunting situation a dog must do a great deal more than “work” the quarry for 90 seconds. A good working dog will stick to the task for as long as it can hear people moving about overhead – whether that is 15 minutes or three hours.

The real division street between go-to-ground and earthwork, however, is size. And the real problem with a go-to-ground trial is not that it teaches a dog to go too fast down a tunnel (dogs understand the difference between fake liners and real earth), but that it suggests to terrier owners that any dog that can go down a cavernous go-to-ground tunnel is a dog “suitable for work.”

To its credit, the American Working Terrier Association recognizes the difference between a go-to-ground tunnel and real earth work, and implicitly underscores this difference in its rules for earning a Working Certificate.

AWTA rules note that a terrier or dachshund can earn a working certificate on woodchuck, fox, raccoon, badger, or an “aggressive possum” found in a natural earth, but that “this does not include work in a drain or otherwise man-made earth.”

In short, a drain is not a close proxy for a natural earth, and terriers that are too large to work a natural earth do not meet the requirements of a working terrier.

The American Working Terrier Association issues Certificates of Gameness to dogs qualifying at their artificial den trials. Working Certificates are awarded to dogs that work groundhog, fox, raccoon, possum, or badger in a natural den provided that at least one AWTA member is there as a witness. AWTA also issues a Hunting Certificate to a dog that hunts regularly over a period of a year.

Six years after the American Working Terrier Association was created, Mrs. Alisia Crawford, one of the first Jack Russell Terrier breeders in the U.S., founded the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America (JRTCA)

Ms. Crawford and the early founders of the Jack Russell Terrier Club put a lot of thought into structuring the JRTCA so that work remained front and center. Towards that end, the club decided that its highest award -- the "bronze medallion" -- would not go to show dogs, but to working dogs that had demonstrated their ability in the field by working at least three of six types of American quarry -- red fox, Gray fox, raccoon, groundhog, possum, and badger -- in front of a JRTCA-certified field judge.

In the show ring the JRTCA decided to ban professional handlers as it was thought this would keep the shows fun and less important than the essential element of work.

Instead of mandating the kind of narrow conformation ranges demanded by the Kennel Club for their terrier breeds, the JRTCA divided the diverse world of the Jack Russell Terrier into three coat types (smooth, broken and rough), and two sizes (10 inches tall to 12.5 inches tall, and 12.5 inches tall to 15 inches tall).

"Different horses for different courses" became a watch word, with overt recognition that the world of working terriers required dogs able to work different quarry in different earths, and in different climates.

Unlike the Kennel Club the JRTCA also decided to keep their registry an "open" registry so that new blood might be infused at times. At the same time, the Club discouraged inbreeding and eventually restricted line breeding to a set percentage.

To balance off an open-registry with the desire to keep Jack Russell-type dogs looking like Jack Russells, the JRTCA decided not to allow dogs to be registered at birth or to register entire litters. Instead, each dog would be photographed from each side and the front, and admitted to the registry on their own merit, and as an adult. In addition, each dog had to be measured for height and chest span.

What this meant is that at the time of registration, the height and chest measurement of an adult dog could be recorded. Over time, both height and chest size could be tracked through pedigrees -- an essential element of breeding correctly-sized working terriers.

The JRTCA was not shy about their rationale for these rules: they openly and emphatically opposed Kennel Club registration, maintaining that time had show that dogs brought into the Kennel Club quickly grew too big and often lost other essential working attributes such as nose, voice, and prey drive.

Today the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America is the largest Jack Russell Terrier club and registry in the world, and its Annual National Trial attracts approximately 1,200 Jack Russell terriers from all over the U.S. and Canada.

The JRTCA's small professional staff cranks out a solid bi-monthly magazine that is 80-100 pages long, holds a regular schedule of dog shows, and sells deben locator collars, fox nets, and a host of other items ranging from hats and jackets to coffee cups.

The web site of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America ( http://www.terrier.com/ is one of the very best dog sites in the United States, packed with well-presented information, high-quality graphics and a user-friendly layout.

Perhaps the most important service work of the JRTCA are the ads that the Club routinely runs in all-breed publications warning people that Jack Russell Terriers are not a dog for everyone, are primarily a hunting dog, and are not like the cute dogs seen on TV.

Sometime in the last 1990s, following the appearance of Jack Russell Terriers in a host of TV and Hollywood productions ranging from "Wishbone" and "Frasier" to "My Dog Skip" and "The Mask," the American Kennel Club decided to add the Jack Russell Terrier to its roles.

As they had previously done with the Border Collie, the AKC ignored the strong opposition of the large existing breed club, and quietly assembled a new club of show-ring breeders to serve as their stalking horse.

The "Jack Russell Terrier Breeders Association" (later called the Jack Russell Terrier Association of America, and now called the "Parson Russell Terrier Association of America") petitioned for the admission of the Jack Russell Terrier into the Kennel Club and, despite the objections of the JRTCA, the breed was admitted in January of 2001.

The admission of the Jack Russell Terrier into the American Kennel Club was a contentious affair, with the JRTCA standing firm on its long-held rule that no dog could be dual-registered.

What this meant is that breeders had to chose whether to remain in the JRTCA or to "get in early" with the AKC before they closed their registry.

Some of the breeders that chose the AKC did so because they thought they could then sell their puppies for more money, others were eager to be the "big fish in a small pond" at the beginning of a new AKC breed registry. Still others were anxious to attend more dog shows,.

Whatever the reason, the Kennel Club required that the Jack Russell Terrier breed description be narrower than that of the JRTCA. The goal of a Kennel Club breed description is to craft a narrow "standard" -- the wide variance in size, coat and look allowed and encouraged in the world of working terriers would not do.

The American Kennel Club breed standard stipulated that an AKC Jack Russell terrier could not be under 12 inches in height nor over 15 inches in height, and further stipulated that "ideal" dog was 14 inches tall and the ideal bitch was 13" tall.

Ironically, this breed description effectively eliminated about 40% of all the American dogs that had actually worked red fox in the U.S.

More importantly, this narrow standard eliminated the small dogs necessary to "size down" a breed -- something absolutely necessary in order to keep working terriers small enough to work.

Of course the American Kennel Club has never been interested in working terriers and the breed club they created has shown no interest in work either.

Under continuing pressure from the working Jack Russell Terrier community in England and the U.S., the British and American Kennel Clubs decided to jettison the "Jack Russell Terrier" name to more easily identify the non-working show ring dog they favored.

Now called the "Parson Russell Terrier," the AKC dog is quickly getting too big in the chest to work -- though not many dogs are actually taken out into the field to try.

After just three years in the Kennel Club, the "Parson Russell Terrier Club" tried to modify the show ring standard so that the dog no longer had to be spanned. In fact, many Kennel Club judges do not know how to span a terrier and many do not do it as a consequence.

In 2001, the United Kennel Club started an "earth work" program modeled after that of the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America. The UKC working terrier program remains small, with relatively few judges, and it does not appear to be growing very rapidly.

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The First Visual Go-to-Ground Set Up?

Scott K. (aka Gangsters Jack Russell Terriers) dropped me a note to say he thought he "might have built the first artificial open sided earth working tunnel back in the JRTNNC hay days of the early 2000's."

Best of all he has the pictures to prove it! As Scott notes, "These pics are from the final [tunnel set up] I built on a double axle boat trailer so I wouldn't have to start from scratch every year."

He notes that "it was purely a spectators sport with each dog getting a ceramic plaque for entering. The plaques had numbers stamped in the back, and then a drawing at the end of the day was done for a terrier lamp I had made. It was $10 to have your dog 'play,' and in the 5 years we ran the tunnel system at the trials we never took in less than $1,000 with it. It was purely a fun event and a money maker for the club. Although I made no claim to having any rights to the idea, many folks from other clubs contacted me to ask permission to build such a system themselves. Of course I had no objections, and many more of these 'tunnels' were built over the years by various JRT clubs for their trials."

Scott says that in the beginning he built the systems on site the day before the trial, and that one tunnel was constructed entirely of hay bales as the fair grounds had them stacked up. Over time, however, Scott began collecting hollow stumps and logs at the ranch and he eventually incorporated them into a spiraling tunnel system mounted on a 30-foot boat trailer which he could leave assembled and then take to the trials; a kind of carnival setup.

Scott notes that "old dogs, Bull Terriers, young dogs, scared dogs, they all went in as their owners reveled in watching them. I had a couple of trap doors for 'extraction' along the way because some dogs would 'lock-up' and stall the system," and that the fired porcelain 'tickets' were new for each trial and that folks got to where they were collecting them and came back to enter trial after trial."

Now what Scott fails to mention is that be made all those porcelain tickets himself, and the lamps too. Scott is truely an artist with clay (to say nothing of what he can do with a welding rig), and in a subsequent email it came out that has had also taxidermied the fox from a salt-cured skin and an excelsior form. The boy has talent in spades!

I mentioned to Scott that variations on the American go-to-ground terrier trials were now being seen all over the world -- Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, France, Canada, Finland.

They had not cropped up in the U.K. however, because of the strange laws in that country that prevent a dog from even barking at a caged rat at the end of a pipe. It might scare the rat! Perish the thought!

It seemed to me that if a Go-to-Ground trial could be set up that used taxidermy as "quarry," even the animal rights lunatics in the U.K. would be hard pressed to oppose it. Did he think an above-ground Go-to-Ground setup like the one he had put together in California might raise a little cash, Cain and consciousness for the fight against the Ban in the U.K., and/or to support the work of the Fell and Moorland Working Terrier Club? His thoughts?

Scott wrote: "The problem in the U.K is that they can't even pick up a road kill badger. They could use a fox head though. The U.K. judges that came over to our trials were all quite impressed with the system from the stand point of watching all the different terriers reacting to the quarry. It was pretty entertaining and many times a bad [taxidermy] handler would get the mounted fox head too close to the bars and the taxidermy piece would lose a nose or worse. Some heads I bought off EBay, as they normally didn't make it through more than two trials. I know this, the animal-head-on-a-stick definitely fires-up a terrier, and a real working terrier will get just as hot for it as a parlor dog."

Scott went on to say that "If you notice in the pics there is a 2" tube that comes through the 'stop end' where the taxidermy head is located, and this was to 'growl' at the terrier if the dog was a little tentative. I got to where I could growl good enough to run some dogs clear back out of the tunnel system."

And knowing Scott not only could he, but he did!

So there it is, a little history (best to write it down before it gets too old, eh?), a little credit, and perhaps a new idea for those looking to bring in a little money and interest into a terrier club or rescue fund, whether that is here in the U.S. or overseas.
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Coffee and Provocation

Immigration and Wildlife:
When Jimmy Carter went to China, he told Deng Xiaoping he wanted the Chinese to allow their political dissidents to leave. Taking a drag on his cigarette, Deng fixed a level look at President Carter. "Fine," he said. "How many million do you want?" The same question is now being debated on Capitol Hill, where our politicians are set to put in motion a plan that will inexorably lead to less access to hunting lands all across the United States as many scores of millions of additional people are added to our population over the next 50 years. Don't believe it? Read this old post which sets out the issues and the numbers. For how all this directly impacts hunting, read this little piece entitled "The Real Threat to Hunting (and Wildlife) in America."

Rachel Carson, Bald Eagles and Osprey:
Rachel Carson was a government public relations hack, and for that reason alone I have a soft spot for her. I am happy to report that The Washington Post has a very nice profile of her in today's paper which details, in some small way, her struggles with breast cancer at the end of her life. What most people don't know is that while DDT is bad for birds and other living things, it was not the reason for bald eagle and osprey decline in the U.S. For more on that topic, read this old post which comes complete with a few links to the Audubon data.

AKC Earthdog Events:
May 26-28 and June 2-3 there will be various Earthdog and Teckel trials at Village Green Farm Earthdog Center, Crosswicks, NJ (i.e. JoAnne Frier-Murza's place). Go to http://www.njbearthdogs.org/ to find details and a calendar of future events.

"Strong Dog" Trials: Where Fancy Leads to Fantasy

I received a note this week from a noted dog magazine asking if I would be interested in writing an article about the "Strong Dog" go-to-ground trials that have recently been set up by some of the show ring set here in the U.S.

My short answer was "no." The story here is that these "strong dog" trials were created by a Glen of Imaal terrier owner here in America who was trying to find some fake sport (not true field hunting or even barn hunting) that over-large terriers could do that was parallel to American "earth dog" trials.

It seems that agility, obedience, tracking, etc. were not exclusive enough -- any and every breed of dog could be found in these competitions.

What the large-terrier owners wanted was some type of fake field sport which they could claim was a mimic of some useful thing their breed once did.

Unfortunately, the Glen of Imaal and the other large Irish terrier breeds (such as the Kerry Blue) were never used for hunting. They were farm dogs, fighting dogs, cart dogs or types of turnspit dogs. Some of the Irish breeds, like the Irish Terrier, were cobbled up solely for the show ring.

Today in Ireland badger are still dug, but they are dug with the same dogs used all over -- working Jack Russell Terriers, working Patterdale Terriers, working Border Terriers, and various types of not too-large cross-bred dogs. In Germany and a few other countries, working Dachshunds (teckels) are also used.

The idea behind a "Strong Dog" trial is that a dog is needed to pull a large dead badger down a long length of pipe. Never mind that the goal of digging to a dog is to come down on top of the critter, not 30 feet away. Never mind that if you shot a badger any distance down a pipe you would probably have to shoot through your own dog first. Never mind that you cannot shoot a bullet around corners.

Remember, this "strong dog" stuff is a fanciers fantasty, not a digger's reality. Fanciers have never heard of badger tongs, snares, or locator collars and do not understand that when an animal is killed underground, it is generally an arm's length away.

What follows is a post I wrote in March 19, 2005 for this blog which sets out the origins of the fake work now being called a "strong dog" trial.

n n n n n n n n n n n

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No terrier breed is very old.

Depite the fact that all but one or two terrier breeds originated in the last 150 years, most breed histories are so riddled with myth, lies, confusions, disortions, exagerations and fantasies that they are nearly unfathomable.

Part of this has to do with the mythology of show ring aficionados. A coat color variation will pop up in a litter and someone will admire it and attempt to breed more like it. To butter the bread a bit, a short story is invented to explain why the attribute has some imagined import in the world of working terriers ("White dogs are less likely to be mistaken for the fox"). A dog's legs are low to the ground and another attribute is given meaning ("The dachsunds short legs enable it to get to ground with ease"). A dog's nose is lengthened, solely for looks, and we are told this is necessary for work ("The fox terriers long snout keeps its eyes well back from the fox").

In fact, most terrier breeds were never seriously or commonly worked, and even a few of the breeds which many believed were commonly worked never did much outside of one or two owners. The Sealyham terrier -- a great favorite of Sir Jocelyn Lucas -- was such a smash favorite that it was repeatedly said that Lucas "had the only pack of working Sealyhams" in the U.K., and he himself attempted to abandon the breed by crossing it with a Norfolk terrier which, in turn, resulted in such an unimpressive dog that it too passed into the realm of footnotes and fantasy until it was recreated and shoved into the show ring in recent years.

So it is with breed after breed in the terrier world, from Cairn to Norfolk, from Scottie to Irish, from Manchester to Skye, from Yorkie to Kerry Blue. None of these dogs ever saw serious work underground, at least not in anything like their current recognizeable form.

The short and simple truth is that the world of working terriers has changed very little in the last 200 years. The same dogs are being dug to today that were being dug to 100 years ago -- no more and no less. The shovels are the same and the bar is the same. Only the Deben locator is different.

This is not to say that a lot of trumped up histories have not been invented -- from fake paintings of Trump (Jack Russell's dog) to fanciful descriptions of shepherds protecting their flocks from marauding fox the size of wolves, to the creation of mysterious "extinct" breeds of terriers which, a close reading of history reveals, never even existed at all (or still exist, but under a different name).

As noted in previous posts, most terriers breeds evolved (or devolved as the case may be) from cross-bred farm terriers with little or no particular function. Most of these dogs were all-purpose pets and chore companions who, it was hoped, would score an occassional rat, bush a rabbit, and perhaps discourage a fox from entering the farm yard and stealing a chicken. In truth, their chief "job" then -- as now -- was to sleep, clean off kitchen plates, trot at their owner's side, and greet guests and family members with enthusiasm.

Some of these all-purpose terriers found honest work as cart dogs, riding high on the cart and protecting the horse-drawn "trucks" of the 19th Century from petty thieves. Every bread man had a cart dog, and so too did most fishmongers, butcher boys, and fruit merchants.

A few terriers found work as "turnspit" dogs. The job of the turnspit dog was to walk around an endless wooden "rat race" wheel turning meats that were being roasted -- or else churning butter, pumping water or even washing clothes.

Turnpsit dogs had to be short since they had to fit within half a turning wheel housed inside a small kitchen or out building, but they also had to be very strong, as their jobs frequently lasted many hours without rest.

What ever happened to these "turnspit" dogs? Most simply vanished, but one Irish type -- the Glen of Imaal Terrier -- was declared a "breed," though in truth it never much caught on with the public.

The Glen of Imaal Terrier stands about 14 inches tall, but it has a massive head and chest and weighs in at around 35 pounds -- more than twice the weight of the average vixen. These dogs were never designed to go down a fox den -- they are simply too big. This is a short strong dog designed to turn a spit. They also found some use in another arena -- badger baiting and dog fighting.

Small strong dogs were often used in the cruel-practice of badger-baiting which, it should be said, has nothing to do with badger hunting despite the rather obvious effort to confuse the two by animal rights lunatics.

Badger baiting is a betting game in which captive badgers are loaded into barrels, pipes or artificial earths so that humans can bet on dogs that are timed as they draw them out. A baited badger may face several dogs over an extended period of time and there is no larger point to it than to win sums of money or bragging rights, while considerable stress (and sometimes injury) is inflicted on the badger and the dog.

Badger hunting, on the other hand, is a legitimate form of pest control in which the badger is terminated as quickly and painlessly as possible, or else sacked to be moved to another earth. There is no betting, and the badger is not likely to suffer damage from the dog, though the converse cannot always be said.

The Glen of Imaal Terrier, which started out as a turnspit dog, found some popularity with Irish badger baiters and dog fighters. This was a dog that was large enough to pull a large badger out of a barrel -- something beyond the abilities of most 15-pound fox-working dogs.

The use of Glen of Imaal Terrier by badger baiters led some to believe this dog was often used for badger hunting. In fact, this was not so. Arthur Heinemann's Badger Digging Club, which later became the Jack Russell Terrier Club of Great Britain, used Jack Russell Terriers to do the job. Sir Jocelyn Lucas used a pack of very small Sealyham terriers. Bert Gripton used very small cross-bred Jack Russells, etc.

When badger baiting was banned, a small group of Glen of Imaal Terrier owners invented a "test" in an attempt to give their breed continued purpose in a changing world. Thus was born the "Teastas Beg" and the "Teastas Mor" -- gaelic words meaning "Little Test" and "Big Test"

The Teastas Beg was a pretty modest affair and was really nothing more that artificial ratting and rabbit bushing.

"A Teastas Beag consisted of flinging rats into a large pond and allowing the dogs competing to swim and hunt one at a time. The inexperienced handlers of the rats created much merriment and a large proportion of the rats survived to tell the tale. In the case of the rabbits, each one was released from a marked spot on the fresh ground. As soon as it had taken cover the dog was released at the spot where the rabbit had been set free. He was required to run the trail accurately and to hunt well through briars and undergrowth. The actual catching and killing of the rabbit was immaterial as any untrained dog will often do that. Often to save time, the judges would call up a dog once he had satisfied them as to his capabilities."

The Teastas Mor was simply an attempt to bring back badger baiting, albeit under the cover of a "club" activity. Only a handful of Teastas Mor events were ever held, as the authorities quickly ruled them illegal and in violation of the badger baiting laws. As one observor noted of a 1926 Teastas Mor event:

"On the first and second occasions the badger chute was defined as, (rule A4) 'A natural shore at least fifteen feet long, not more than sixteen inches wide with a bed ten feet from the mouth. A well about twelve inches square to contain the badger must be at least eight inches below the level of the shore and at right angles to it.' It is obvious that such an exact arrangement could not have been natural. It was artificial, the sides and top being of timber. This rule cause the Committee's undoing at the subsequent State Prosecutions. The Court held that the baiting of a captive animal had been proved which is contrary to the law and the defendant members of the Committee were fined."

Later the "earth," while still artificial, was constructed of earth and stones and sodded over with grass. The end effect was a bit like a cross between an AKC earthdog set up and an artificial earth for fox.

Unfortunately, a twising den earth in real earth proved too difficult for over-large Glen of Imaal Terriers to negotiate!

"Natural badger work still appeared unwieldy to the Committee and the Teastas Mor on that occasion consisted of an artificial earth constructed of stones and covered over with sods some time previously. The growth of grass made it, in the absence of direct evidence, almost impossible to prove the construction artificial. The badger was put in early that morning before the possible arrival of any police inspectors. It was one captured by a small Blue Bitch of mine, 'Emer,' the previous week. These preparations defeated their own object, for the earth was too long and too narrow and too twisty for the dogs, and none of them succeeded in drawing the badger while some were severely mauled in the attempt. I never saw that particular earth, but it was feelingly pointed out that the members who constructed it had not entered any of their own dogs! After that it was a case of 'back to nature' - a decision both welcome and sound."

In fact, there was no "back to nature" with the Glen of Imaal; very few of the dogs ever worked historically, and almost none are found in the field today even in those countries where legal and illegal badger digging is common.

This is hardly surprising -- a dog designed to be mute and to fight anything it sees head-on is a dog that is hard to locate and likely to be wrecked in short order by a badger. Badger diggers at the turn of the century --as today -- prefer a smaller dog with more discretion and more voice. Unsurprisingly, they use the same terriers for badger work today that they did 100 and more year s ago -- Jack Russells, Fells, Patterdales, and various crosses in between.


For more see:

• >> The Nonsense of Pulls Dogs
• >> Honey Pots and Trolls in the Land of Eire
• >> The Sad Rise of Hard Dogs
  

More on Dandie Dinmonts -- and a Small Challenge

In yesterday's post, I noted that the Dandie Dinmont was sliding over the abyss of extinction with more Giant Pandas born last year than these once-upon-a-time working dogs.

I suggested that the cause for the demise of this dog was that market forces were at work: the Dandie Dinmont was no longer a working dog and no longer satisfied a need, and so had lost whatever constituency it once had.

Forced to compete head-to-head with other poodle-coated mops, this dog found few customers due to a high initial expense, an odd-looking sway back, and poor movement. If the Dandie had ever been bred for work in the last 100 years, it might have a client base today; it would certainly have much better structure. Instead, one of the oldest terrier breeds is about to go all the way throught the fanciers pipe and into the dustbin of extinction. Or at least that is the fear of some.

In short order I was inundated by lengthy emails ... from two people (a small joke). The first post was from Hilary Cheyne (quoted in the first article) who runs the Caledonian Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club. She wrote to say they were not trying to market the dog -- did I get that impression from their press release?

She went on to say that there were almost no Dandie puppies being born and that in her Club they were now running coefficients of inbreeding on the remaining dogs "so hopefully we will realise that what we call 'linebreeding' is just another name for 'inbreeding'." She then went on to say that "Outcrossing has and will be considered but it isn't needed at the moment" and then, a few sentences later, she observed that "Everyone now knows that Dandies can have Cushings, Glaucoma and Hypothyroidism" and that the dog also sometimes has "narrow angle glaucoma that is unique to Dandies."

OK. Good to know. A very small gene pool with serious health problems and even unique health problems? No reason to outcross then! Carry on!

Ms. Cheyne then went on to let me know that there were a lot of working Dandies -- look at all those American earthdog trials. At this point, I have to tell you, I started to chortle a little bit. So it's come down to this, has it -- fake work against a caged rat in a foreign country (and not many Dandies showing up even for that). Nothing wrong with earthdog trials (I have a section on the web site and in the book on earthdog trials, and I have written articles for magazines in favor of them), but let's not confuse a go-to-ground trial with real work, please.

The next letter in the email box was from Paul Keevil who wanted me to know that "it is actually against the law to hunt with dogs here in the United Kingdom, just as it is against the law to own firearms," so I was completely off the mark to suggest the Dandie might yet be saved if it ever saw a bit of honest work underground.

Of course, Paul is simply wrong. It's NOT illegal to hunt with terriers in the UK -- many thousands of fox are being dug to legally every year under the brand-new Hunting Act thanks to the exception for fox abatement on private bird-shooting lands.

And, ironically, the new law requires that any fox that is dug be shot with a gun -- you cannot move it to a new location as before.

In fact, guns and hunting fox with terriers is regulated in the UK, but neither is banned, as anyone who hunts with terriers in the UK can affirm. BASC alone has 120,000 gun-toting members, and somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 fox a year are being dug to today.

The funny thing here is that the Hunting Act is just one year old and the Dandie Dinmont has been sliding into the abyss for 100 years due to the fact that the shape of the dog has been seriously distorted by show ring breeders.

Mr. Keevil and Ms. Cheyne were not digging on the dogs when it was wide-open to them; and neither was almost anyone else in the incredible shrinking Dandie Dinmont community.

Mr. Keevil upbraided me for only quoting Rawdon Lee, asking me if that was "the best terrier book you have?" Well, no, I have quite a few more books. So let's quote a few of the ones that are actually about working terriers and are not all-breed books or historical novels:

• Mark Giles in "Working Terriers" (1988): "I don't know anyone who has a Dandie Dinmont that works."
  
  
• Jocelyn Lucas in "Hunt and Working Terriers" (1931) does not mention the breed as a worker.
  
  
• David Harcombe in "The World of the Working Terrier" (1989): Mentions Dandie Dinmonts in a single sentence list of 20 Kennel Club breeds, which is followed by "There, I have mentioned them and now we can forget about them. All, for various reasons, including size and temperament are not suitable to be considered for earth work. Any working terrierman who outcrosses his stock to such animals, and hopes to improve the working qualities, quite simply needs his head examined."
  
  
• Brian Plummer in "The Working Terrier" (1978): "[T]he Dandie can scarcely be regarded as a force to be reckoned with as a working terrier. I find them far too slow to suit my requirements, and their very shape indicates a fundamental lack of agility that is essential in working terriers...."
  
  
• John Broadhurst, et. al. in "Terriers and Terriermen" (2002): Not one of the 51 terriermen interviewed works this type of dog or even mentions the breed.
  
  
• Sean Frain in "The Traditional Working Terrier" (2001): Does not mention the breed at all.
  

And, of course, there are two books on American working terriers, neither one of which mentions the breed as a worker.

In a friendly exchange of emails, I extended a challenge to Mr. Keevil who says he has no interest in working his terriers but is very well-connected in the picture world (he runs a canine graphics-art business).

My challenge is for him to find even one picture of a Kennel Club Dandie Dinmont that was dug to in the last 50 years. I want a photograph of a Dandie (wearing a locator collar) and his fox or badger standing next to a hole freshly dug. No roadkill photos now! I noted that "It's very easy for show ring fanciers to drift into fantasy and spend their days mooning over paintings and standards. The end result is what you have with the Dandie Dinmont today -- a dog teetering on the edge of extinction and as far from its roots as a (theoretical) working dog can get."

The challenge is not yet very old yet (made yesterday), and I hope a photograph of a working Dandie will arrive and I can post it. That said, I am not all that hopeful. The first flurry of activity from Mr. Keevil produced five illustrations of Dandie Dinmont's (none of the illustrations showing a dog working fox or badger). I am confident we can do better than this. Even the Loch Ness monster and Sasquatch have real action photographs of themselves!

Perhaps we shall yet get an old picture of Alf Rhodes who the Caledonian Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club itself describes as "the last man going to ground with Dandies." Rhodes went to the Great Hunting Ground in the Sky in 2003 at the age of 81 or so. He did not work his dogs in his later years, but he did have a working Dandie or two in the mid-1970s. Since that's only 30 years ago, and well within my 50-year challenge, we may yet see a picture of a working Dandie.

A picture, of course, will not save the dog anymore than will pets-and-rosettes promotion of the breed. The last Dandie Dinmont owner on earth will talk of the "3rd Duke of Buccleuch" on the day he or she slides that last dog into the ground, but in fact, if past is prologue (and it so often is) the grave is the first and last hole that that Dandie Dinmont will have ever seen. There is some irony in that. Perhaps that will be the Last Great Dandie Dinmont Story. Sadly, I may yet be around to hear it.